Son, fiancée were petty, yes  but mom should try making nice

Friday

Feb 1, 2013 at 6:00 AM

ANNIE’S MAILBOX KATHY MITCHELL AND MARCY SUGAR

DEAR ANNIE: Two years ago, my son’s fiancée recommended we rotate who hosts Christmas dinner. That year, she and my son went to her mom’s house, and last year they were supposed to come to mine. Instead, they went to her mom’s again and were upset that I didn’t want to tag along. My 73-year-old mother was in a rehab facility. There was no way I could bring her along for dinner, and I refused to leave her alone.

A week before Christmas, my future daughter-in-law sent me a text asking me to reconsider. I again said no. She accidentally texted me instead of my son and said, “Your mom is a nasty liar.” I immediately got another text saying, “I’m sorry, but my feelings are hurt.” I forwarded both of these to my son, who said he didn’t have time to deal with this.

Right after the holiday, my mother fell and broke her hip. She ended up needing two surgeries. She refused additional treatment, saying she’d had enough. She went into hospice care and died a few days later.

My son became angry with me, saying I deliberately shortened Mom’s life by putting her into hospice. My son’s fiancée still has not apologized for what she texted. I haven’t heard from either of them since.

How do I handle this mess? My husband and I are both losing sleep. — HURT

DEAR HURT: Our condolences on the loss of your mother. Your son may be feeling guilty for pressuring you to abandon Grandma for his fiancée’s Christmas dinner, not realizing how short her time was. It is not uncommon to deflect that by blaming someone else. And his fiancée may be encouraging his anger toward you because it gets her off the hook entirely.

Please forgive them so you can work on your grieving process without this additional sadness. Keep the lines of communication open, and try to maintain a certain superficiality.

DEAR ANNIE: We are getting tired of people telling us that the use of capital letters in our emails means we are “shouting” at them.

We are visually impaired and have friends who have glaucoma, eye cancer and developing cataracts or are post cataract surgery, and some of us have macular degeneration in various stages. We are blessed that we can still use our computers, but are unable to read the small print of most messages. We need and appreciate the larger capital letters. — WINDOWS TO THE SOUL

DEAR WINDOWS: We are sympathetic to your plight, but using all caps looks like shouting to most people. Of course, if that’s the only way you can see the type, by all means continue. However, there are other ways to increase the type size. Try holding CTRL while pressing the plus sign or rolling your mouse wheel forward. Or hit “reply,” and then highlight the text and increase the font size.